Vista Firewall Settings

[Basil]

Reading some of Corrine's comments on Privatefirewall, prompted me to look yet again at the settings of my Vista firewall.

A few years ago,  I changed the default setting under "Domain Profile" to block Outbound connections that do not match a rule.
Here is a screen shot of my settings:
http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc28/gr277/Firewall.jpg

As you can see, under "Private Profile" and "Public Profile" Outbound connections are allowed (default settings).

I do not fully understand the terms "Private Profile" and "Public Profile" in terms of the firewall.
Should I also change those two settings to also block "Outbound connections that do not match a rule", without giving myself a problem?.. :(

Thank you

[Corrine]

The description below from TechNet should help, Understanding Firewall Profiles:

Domain
   
Applied to a network adapter when it is connected to a network on which it can detect a domain controller of the domain to which the computer is joined.

Private
   
Applied to a network adapter when it is connected to a network that is identified by the user or administrator as a private network. A private network is one that is not connected directly to the Internet, but is behind some kind of security device, such as a network address translation (NAT) router or hardware firewall. For example, this could be a home network, or a business network that does not include a domain controller. The Private profile settings should be more restrictive than the Domain profile settings.

Public

Applied to a network adapter when it is connected to a public network such as those available in airports and coffee shops. When the profile is not set to Domain or Private, the default profile is Public. The Public profile settings should be the most restrictive because the computer is connected to a public network where the security cannot be controlled. For example, a program that accepts inbound connections from the Internet (like a file sharing program) may not work in the Public profile because the Windows Firewall default setting will block all inbound connections to programs that are not on the list of allowed programs.

[Basil]

Thank you Corrine,
This link has answered my question very nicely.